The Child Inside the Adult

We like to pretend we grow out of our childhood, but the truth is simpler and far more uncomfortable: the child never leaves—she just learns to drive the car. Every adult walking around with a short fuse, a quiet storm, or a tear tucked behind a fake smile… that’s a child who once learned how emotions were supposed to be handled. Some of us were told to “dry it up right now. “ Some were exiled to a bedroom until we could “show some respect.” And a few—rare, gentle few—had someone who sat beside us until our breathing slowed and our world steadied.

But the way our parents handled our “big emotions” didn’t just shape our childhood. It shaped our adulthood. It shaped how we explode, shut down, shout, withdraw, or cope now. Because adults don’t melt down over one thing— it’s the stack of tiny things, the quiet pressures, the invisible weight. Little hurts become big hurts. And then the child inside finally says, “That’s enough,” and out comes the adult-sized temper tantrum.

Here’s the real kicker: Children get punished, silenced, or sent to their room. Adults just get misunderstood. People rarely slow down long enough to ask, “What’s actually happening under all that noise?”

We’re a fast-paced, self-focused world. Few people will sit with you the way a child should be sat with— patient, steady, curious. Most of us are just trying not to drown, so nobody stops long enough to see the water rising in someone else. And so we break. Or at the very least, we crack the relationships around us. Not because we’re bad… but because nobody ever taught the child inside us how to speak, feel, or be held. Parents weren’t trying to fail us. They were doing what they knew. How does a wounded child in an adult body raise another child with tools they never received?

But here’s where the healing begins:

Communication isn’t a lost art—it’s a neglected one.

Real communication starts when someone cares enough to slow down. To listen with the heart instead of the ego. To let another person rage, cry, tremble, or fall apart without getting defensive or offended. To stay long enough to ask, “What’s the real wound underneath this?”

When we do that for someone else, we also—finally—do it for ourselves.

Because beneath the armor, beneath the schedules and bills and grown-up masks, every one of us is still a child hoping someone will sit down beside us and say, “I’m here. Let’s figure this out together.”

And maybe—just maybe— learning how to listen to each other is how we finally learn to listen to the child within.

“May you meet the child within you with compassion,
and may every brave breath you take
teach your grown-up heart how to love itself back home.”

💙Jen